Apps with­out the Store

Q Is it pos­si­ble to in­stall an app that isn’t on the App Store? I have tried adding a .ipa file to iTunes on my Mac but get an er­ror. Dim­itri Molchanov A Where does this app come from? If it is an old app that’s been re­moved from the store, you may be able to re­store it pro­vided that you had pre­vi­ously in­stalled it and it ap­pears in your list of pur­chased apps in iTunes. But if it’s a ran­dom .ipa file you’ve found on the web then you can’t in­stall it with­out jail­break­ing your de­vice. Nor should you, since there is no way to ver­ify its prove­nance.

Ap­ple’s ap­proval process en­sures the apps on its store are re­li­able, free from ma­li­cious code and of­fen­sive ma­te­rial.

If the app is some­thing you have writ­ten your­self, on the other hand, then you can side-load it onto your de­vice by en­rolling in the Ap­ple De­vel­oper Pro­gram (de­vel­oper.ap­ple.com/pro­grams).